A Letter From Tanzania

“The Society is dedicated to tree planting, resource management, and other environmental conservation projects. We aim to conserve biodiversity in the Mountains and reforest degraded lands to slow climate change globally and preserve soils and water locally, educate youth and provide them with improved nutrition from tree products, and help reduce poverty in the region.

Our goal is to plant at least 500,000 trees in 2016-2017 and more if sufficient funding is available.
Tree nurseries at 4 rural schools will grow from seed a range of trees species including species native to the rainforest, fruit trees including avocado, apple, macadamia, and peach, the super-tree Moringa, plus other trees used for fodder and windbreaks.

Seedlings will be out-planted in the Nature Reserve to rebuild the forest cover. In addition, the project will plant trees to preserve a large Water Catchment Basin, which supplies fresh water to over 20,000 people in Town and is important to the health of the Reserve.
Fruit trees planted at the schools and on subsistence farms in agroforestry are a key element to the Program. Besides providing much-needed nutrition to the children and adults in the area, fruit tree cultivation protects fruit trees growing in the nature reserve. Trees will be planted along streams to prevent future stream bank erosion.

Education is an important element of this work. Today’s children are tomorrow’s conservation leaders and this program creates youth development clubs where the students are put into leadership positions. The school tree nurseries serve as onsite science labs where the students can learn about and practice the scientific method by posing questions and answering them through experimentation. Kids learn from their supportive teachers, who integrate the Trees for the 21st Century curriculum into lessons about environmental conservation, botany, and horticulture, and then put the lessons into practice as they have fun growing and planting trees that beautify their school, their homes, and their region. This project will follow the community participation model and residents will volunteer in the nurseries and provide other types of in-kind support.

A goal is also to educate subsistence farmers about agroforestry, so they can increase land productivity. They want to educate the entire population about the importance of preserving and expanding the rainforest in the Nature Reserve, which is important to help achieve Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals.

The Project is designed to be a sustainable conservation project. Some of the trees will be sold to raise enough money to obtain inputs for the next “crop” of trees. The program must make economic sense to the residents, which is why subsistence farmers are given seedlings to plant on their farms. As these trees grow to maturity, food from the fruit trees and Moringa will provide an additional income stream, helping people to graduate from extreme poverty.

The targeted project beneficiaries of the project proposal are local communities, a nature reserve and the government, four schools and over 20,000 people livings in town.

Local communities will be the beneficiaries of the project; local people will be integrated into the project with the direct and indirect employment in the youth by establishing an environmental business in their villages.